


Clippings

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Personal Challenge, Prompt Fic, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-08 06:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles focusing on the alpha kids. An exploration of their overall friendship and interwoven relationships. May occasionally delve into the realm of speculative fiction. Mostly highlights moments of emotion and stress extrapolated from the comic. Warning: May occasionally cause gross feelings and/or inconsiderately stomp on one's cardiovasculars.</p><p>Current Drabble (018): Jane, "Daze." Baby heiress' first assassination attempt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roxy: "Addict"

**Author's Note:**

> This was a personal challenge, to write 100 drabbles, doing one drabble at a time. I actually conceived to do this months back, so the first couple drabbles are tweaked from ages ago. Ideally, I'll be super-awesome and post a piece every day. More likely, updates will be scattered. All the same, goals are nice and this will be fun! Welcome to anyone who would like to ride along.

-

-

She isn't powerless.

Each keystroke comes quick and sure, too certain for backspace, unapologetic even in her self-corrections. She can stop anytime. She chooses not to, glass held aloft. Not a drop spilled, not a word stymied, perfect control. 

The liquor cabinet fortress she breaches nightly, daring raids that would do Jake proud. It is a choice. Her decision when her forays become diurnal, when the empty bottles betray that truth. She dreams her mother's ghost.

Frustration consumes her. 

The vodka burns, the gin fizzes, and no mother can intercede. 

She'll quit when she's told, power taken. 

She'll quit never. 

-


	2. Dirk: "Ironic"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's going to become impossible to believe that my prompt words are random and generated in a way that has nothing to do with Homestuck fairly soon, isn't it?

-

-

Is it for ironic purposes?

The swords propped against the door. The shades resting on the bridge of his nose. The impertinent puppet ass crowding close. A study of careful intent, deconstructed into more basic absurdities. The viewer implored to withhold judgment. No questions until the end of the show. 

Is nothing genuine? 

He closed the casing, sleek metal concealing the plush guts within. Doubt was nonexistent, the deadliness of his creation indisputable. It was finished. His gift would be received favorably, or his efforts would have failed. Nothing else to be done. 

His sincerity would be the best punchline. 

-


	3. All: "Crush"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The execution of this one is a bit clunky, but I still like the concept, so here it is. Ostensibly "takes place" before Jake's conversation with Jane about her feelings.

-

-

Jake's feet crush the pumpkin vines, his skulltop's embrace crushing his hair to his forehead. 

Jane crushes candies for cookies and cradles her dreams, contacts Jake from her kitchen hands-free. 

The crush of expectations shadows Roxy, crushes the breath from her lungs, her own crush quietly kept in dutiful friendly penance. 

Dirk crushes his wants with work, but still he watches, solace secured through robot avatars. 

Jake keeps the peace. He cannot let his friends fight. He cannot crush their hopes, cannot hurt the people he loves best. He cannot make a decision when he doesn't know what he wants. 

-


	4. Jane: "Downstairs"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At no point did I ever feel compelled in the slightest to make a joke about stairs.

-

-

She had always descended those stairs with ease, an exuberant child tromping down their treads, carefree and careless. Hearing her dad below – hearing the muffled footsteps from his office, the busy bustle from the kitchen – was a familiar comfort of home. 

Now she watches her home drop into the pit, measure by measure, the downstairs sinking down, down, further down, a descent beyond the reach of her feet. She hears the whoosh of stale air, the distant pattering of rain from rising pods. Her dad is gone. There is no comfort; it ghosts away like rising helium, like drying rain.

-


	5. Jake: "Tragedy"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then each of the kids had their very own drabble. This one cataloging a moment that I very much wanted to touch on.

-

-

An adventurer must always be prepared.

Pack light. Pack wise. Keep your bearings. Know the exits. Carry no less than five computers at all times. In the event of an emergency, be very, very certain not to panic. 

Never panic. Panicking gets even heroes killed. 

Plan for every eventuality. If you can predict a situation, you can survive. 

An adventurer must stay calm, even facing death.

Even facing tragedy. 

When the impossible happens, only a clear head and steady nerves will get you through. Examine the wounds. Prepare the body. Light the pyre. 

Don't cry until it all burns out. 

-


	6. Autoresponder: "Glass"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might have been neat if I wrote this one even closer to its point of relevance. The autoresponder gets a drabble! I think I wanted to try not to write these in second person, largely, but I find that POV addicting.

-

-

You watch them, from behind glass. 

Meteors are falling, the universe is rending, the rooftop teems with drones and everything is pressure and fire and flames. 

You tell her, don't go there.

You tell him, don't do that. 

It's no surprise they don't listen. Their transparency is legendary; their folly, indescribable. You're words on a screen, crimson and glaring, and your processing churns to calculate how seriously they regard you. Your realness attribute is an error screen. 

You exist as tinted plastic. 

You read them, obvious as a ransom note, but you won't save them.

You are not the hero. 

-


	7. Jake, Brobot: "Silver"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brobot may be gone now, but for a while he was a certainty to Jake, however uncomfortable that may have been at times. Consider this a tribute.

-

-

The sky is blue raspberry candyfloss, scattered with marshmallow clouds in shocking white. Overhead, the sun is a sweating lemon drop, a smudge of yellow haloed in light that burns crimson and gold spots into the shadows of Jake's eyes. He walks over grass the color of fresh-squeezed limes, his shadow bruise-purple against the verdant green. The vivid scenery electrifies his sight.

Brobot's chassis is the silver of mercury, reflective and kinetic. The glare is dazzling; the vision familiar. Dirk's robot fits like a puzzle piece into Jake's worldview, certain as the skyscape and sunlight, silver like moonlight at starfall. 

-


	8. Dirk, Roxy: "Sacred"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then I moved on from weird character studies and attempted to write interpersonal relationships more specifically.

-

-

Roxy is effervescent.

Even asleep, she is brilliance and buoyancy, poorly-tethered and straining towards something inarticulated. Where she craves to go is more incomprehensible than her worst keyboard follies. 

Dirk brings her back every time. 

It's a sacred ritual, Roxy's retrieval. Dirk tows her by the hand, soft and subdued against his own, her body a heated ghost trailing in his wake. Attending to her is duty and diligence. It is not a cross to be borne, but a pleasure to uphold. He pledges his fidelity with fervency.

The prince returns the lady to her tower, and awaits her awakening. 

-


	9. Jane, Dirk: "Moment"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometime soon I will stop beleaguering the showdown moment on Derse. Today is not that day.

-

-

It takes the span of a heartbeat.

Dirk points, yells, orders her to get out. Retreat. Escape the roiling violet haze.

He glows in the pitiless light of the flames and Jane is transfixed. Dirk is magnificent and terrible, hovering amidst chaos, and it is the first time she has seen his breathing flesh. Her urgency slows, petrifies, preserved like a fossil in amber. She's frozen like a trapped insect, worse than with Jake and her feelings.

She's pinned like that same unwitting bug, and red licorice candy never hurt so true. 

She hopes she's the only one who choked. 

-


	10. Dirk: "Bubble"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This qualifies as update fic; how strange and unusual.

-

-

The film punctures, vibrates like champagne fizz. 

Dirk watches Roxy float on the outside, spacegirl departing wonderland. He was her shuttle out. 

He'll catch his own flight home. 

And it's not even ironic, being trapped in a bubble. He's a dude who spent much of his life encapsulated, isolated, deprived of human contact. There's nothing funny about walling him in literally, throwing him more company than he's ever known, just turning the key in the lock but telling him he has to go. 

Leave. Save the world. Save his friends.

He has to let someone else eject his escape pod. 

-


	11. Jake: "Wherever"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We interrupt your regularly scheduled recent-updates-relevant drabble to bring you retroactive, hypothetical foreshadowing.

-

-

The movies Jake loves feature far-off places, foreign lands full of risk and promise in equal measure. Jake shouldn't idolize them, familiar as he is with danger.

But sometimes he wants to go miles away. 

Other movies Jake watches depict big-city life, or the political intrigue of high school routine. Sometimes, he watches classes and cliques, and those hallway locales seem more exotic by far. 

Sometimes, he imagines living that life, with his friends, prone as he is to entertaining certain what-ifs. 

Even impossible ones. 

He thinks, if he only found a doorway out, to wherever, maybe he'd take it. 

-


	12. Roxy, AR: "Element"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I legitimately believe Roxy is a kickass hacker. I will not be convinced otherwise.

-

-

In cyberspace, Roxy is in her element.

The web is her hidden temple, her buried crypt. Her treasures are secrets kept only a keystroke away. On the information superhighway she is a rogue of uncommon talent, roaring down familiar roads and seeking long-forgotten streets. 

Seeking challenge.

Craving recognition. 

Sometimes, even the net feels like a ghost town. It's no rodeo by her lonesome. 

Sometimes, she longs to drive a little faster. She needs a partner who can best her. 

Jake might think Dirk's AR a poor imitation. But he's speed and lightning and unshakable backup.

And he breathes her element. 

-


	13. Brobot, Dirk, Jake: "Green"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A less happy brobot-centric piece to compliment the fairly uplifting one I already wrote.

-

-

The uranium is green, green like acid, green like poison.

Green like the wide-blown irises of Jake English's eyes.

When Dirk buries that glowing heart within his robot, he does so with precision, delicate and surgical. It's fitting, that his creation's chest be occupied – that its driving force be housed within its breast, just as with any human.

It's poetic. Sentimental. Ironic. 

When the robot opens up its chest, showing its guts for the first time since Dirk's bedroom ages back, it's discordant, the metal rending, shrieking, coming apart with great strain. 

Its heart beheld, circuitously, by matching shock-green eyes. 

-


	14. Jane, Roxy: "Reach"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It may have become evident that I tend to avoid dialogue in drabbles. This is me rectifying that. Sort of. This is also me airing some of my Jane and Roxy feelings.

-

-

She tells you, her mom is dead.

She tells you, don't play the game. 

She tells you, she can make objects disappear, reappear.

-

You tell her, don't be dramatic. 

You tell her, this is just healthy skepticism. 

You tell her, seeing is believing, nothing stomached without a little proof. 

-

She tells you, she's serious as a heart attack.

She tells you, open your earholes, she's only gonna type it once.

She tells you, Janey, believe her, please. 

-

You thought she had a powerful imagination. Hindsight illuminates each grasping overture, each perceived lie you now discover was a hand reaching out. 

-


	15. Jake, Dirk, AR: "Face"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered very hard writing something nice in response to the latest update. There was a lot of opportunity. Instead, have something that should probably bear warnings for gore/death. I'm not sure if I should up the rating, whoops.

-

-

Dirk's face is blank.

Still.

No muscle twitches, no tiny cues, and it is not the way Jake imagined it. This isn't looking at a person. The conversation runs in his head, crimson and unyielding; Jake has to jog to keep up. Comprehension is vast distances away; it feels like ages, it feels like miles.

Dirk's skin feels like rubber, synthetic, like the wrong kind of give, and there is blood on Jake's fingers. There is blood on Dirk's mouth.

Dirk's mouth feels like bruised fruit, tastes like dirty copper.

Dirk's face is blank, behind Jake.

Like Jake imagined it. 

-


	16. Jane, Roxy, Dirk: "Hold"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's take a moment to celebrate that, at least for right now, all four alpha kids are together and alive and -- we can dare to hope -- happy.

-

-

Jane clutches Roxy, wide-eyed and white-knuckled, flying over open air with no safety net. No amount of trust in Dirk's steering – fearless, unfaltering – can stifle her scream. 

Roxy echoes with a whoop and a yell, her voice thrilled and exultant. 

Her arm around Jane's waist is an anchor.

A lifeline. 

Terror rushes in Jane's blood and fear sings in her ears, but her heart soars and her throat catches and Roxy holds her tight, and suddenly the view is breathtaking. 

The clouds part, the water rushes, Dirk's hand is beside hers on Roxy's waist and Jake is waiting. 

It's transcendental. 

-


	17. Dirk, Sawtooth, Squarewave: "Bump"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, the phoenix that is my drabbles rises from the ashes, in the form of what might best be termed robot domesticity.

-

-

Sawtooth folds into the corner of Dirk's room, an origami of silver and chrome compacted into unobtrusiveness. He jacks into his charging port, silent, powered to "low." 

Squarewave notches in against him, boxy frame jigsawed against Sawtooth's larger mass. 

The room is dark, lit only by the glow of LEDs, of LCD screens, shadows concealing the motion of Squarewave's cables stretching to mate with Sawtooth's externals in symbiotic leeching of charge. Darker when Dirk powers down his machine. 

Two fists rise, little more than charcoal approximations in the blackness. 

Dirk's knuckles meet them, twin solid impacts. 

A patented Strider "goodnight."

-


	18. Jane: "Daze"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Likely the most speculative drabble written in the course of this project thus far.

-

-

The first time, Jane is eight.

Her father always tells her, solemnly, that the world is a dangerous place. He tells her, she is such a big girl now. He is so very proud of her. 

She can walk to the park by herself. He'll catch up to her.

The first time, they aren't subtle. 

Jane is a small thing, dwarfed by dark vehicles, by broad figures, by unconcealed weapons. The gun swings in a slow-motion, lazy arc. She hears the threat from underwater. 

Her dad's interceding she views through a fog, incomprehensible. 

They don't return to that park again. 

-


End file.
